Wednesday, May 31, 2017

The spell worked its magic for three decades. For three decades humanity believed in the blessings that globalization would bring in its wake. It was assumed that in the end everyone involved will benefit when we remove regulations, when corporations become ubiquitous throughout the world, when the banks have lots of money, when tax havens exist, and of course when government stays out of our hair. What prevailed was the primacy of the economy, whether in Herne, New York or Shenyang. It was as simple as that.

But times have changed. Once considered to be the High Temple of market dogma, the mighty financial world was about to collapse ten years ago, before it had to be rescued by - surprise - the rest of us.

What also collapsed was the myth that markets can regulate themselves. Simmering unrest emerged, borne by diffuse fears, half-knowledge and justifiable rejection of what has gone wrong with globalization. It became an opportune time for con men and authoritarians.

We now see a void that cannot be remedied by trying to fix details. What the world needs instead is a new leitmotif, a new guiding concept. We indeed need it before populists of all stripes fill this void by inciting people against each other. Time is of the essence....

The greatest promise has remained unfulfilled: Half of the Americans today have seen stagnating or even significantly lower real incomes since 1989. In Germany, there are 40 percent who are less well-off in real terms, and half of Germans possess practically no wealth. And nearly one in four Germans works for little pay. Such enormous wealth gaps between the rich and the poor existed in the nineteenth century as well.

Depending on the calculation, progress has thus by-passed a third to half of the population. The Americans and Britons were the first to be jolted by this development through the election victories of Trump and Brexit. Ironically it is those very countries who most eagerly followed the mantra of the free markets that are now confronted with Industry 0.0 and social division. Meanwhile, IMF experts are having to concede that capital markets are probably not so efficient after all. And the once orthodox-liberal OECD is only defining growth these days as good growth if it benefits the poor.

The myth of the past has become passé. What is missing is the new, powerful concept.... What we need to find is a unifying formula to define the new paradigm: the leitmotif.

Finding it is a tremendous challenge. It cannot be as simple as the market-works-wonders formula. Yet it must be simple enough to make it plausible to everyone. The solution probably lies somewhere in the middle: in a better controlled, enlightened globalization that can do without the compulsion to standardize everything throughout the world. What is needed is a new balance of liberties with built-in safeguards against excesses. And an environment in which politicians can again shape and decide on policies instead of rescuing banks or states without having much choice in the matter.

The great irony is that the author quite clearly doesn't realize that "the myth of the past" was a con all along, and what he's begging for is a new and improved con from the same set of con artists.

Wow, I missed it. When exactly did we have a free market? We have always been told the government can pick winners and loses WITHIN our own country. Screwed up part about Globalism is now they choose outsiders to also be winners and then have us bail them out.

We've had crony markets for so long I am not even sure I could say when we didn't. The moment Government stated telling us who could associate with whom and who was given privilege of resources we lost all hope of a "free market".

To borrow Steve Sailer's tack, I did CTRL F for "immig" in the original article... it's an article about the discontents of globalism, and Nothing comes up.

The obtuseness -- or mendacity -- of a ruling class spokesman who doesn't understand why we don't want to breed with the Global South, live next to it, or buy things from it at a convenience store, is why Lampposts have been invented.

tublecane wrote:Not that I want a grand unified socio-politico-economic theory. But if you starting out to find one by seeking a leitmotif, you're doing it wrong.He doesn't want one either.He wants the bad White men to go away.

@3-This author, and many others for that matter, mistake the triumph of free market rhetoric in the past few decades for actuality. Communism collapsed and outright socialism has been discredited. Labor ain't what it used to he. Presidents feel free to say government is part of the problem. Libertarianism is accepted in polite conversation, though in my opinion not seriously considered. There's been actual deregulation, within heavily regulated economies, and despite biggies like Obamacare nothing like the accelerated centralization trend of the New Deal Era, for instance.

On the other hand, no significant portion of the New Deal has been rolled back. If the leftist utopian dream of a One World State is far-fetched right now, the world continues to be further centralized by economic (bankster) imperialism. Which gets confused for unregulated capitalism because...I don't know. When capitalism screws up and states bail them out, that's somehow free markets messing with us because...I don't know. When a lack of regulation within a strict regulatory regime causes problems, that's the peril of the unregulated market for no good reason.

For no good reason, I think, but for the reason that these issues are monstrously complex and confuse people. Plus, they have their pet ideas and can't ever let them go. Economic leftism was severely humiliated at the end of the last century, and the natural reaction of its believers was then to blame everything that followed on what they took to be its opposite. And to listen to them, you'd think the Austrian School were running the world since the 70s. Which is of course ridiculous.

I've always been confused as to what people mean by neoliberalism and globalization. I mean, I know what I think they mean, but I don't know what others have in their heads when they use them. They certainly don't mean free markets. If libertarianism were tried it would fail, but it hasn't actually been tried. Not in modern nation-states, and certainly not worldwide.

Yet, President Reagan,for instance, talked about free markets. If he mouthed the words, it must have happened, right?

Healthy parasites are not the measure of a healthy population. Our economic policies are dictated by the parasites. Our measures of economic health measure only the parasites. Our interventions to restore the economy only feed the parasites.

What he's doing by calling any sort of free market idea kaput, is preparing the battlefield. Sowing mines. He wants to pre-emptively rule such talk out. He's about to call for a new "leitmotif" (a hilariously wrong thing to call it, as pointed out), but he wants to make sure the new one will be much like the old one. He wants to make sure the next solution is conforms to his religion, that it's a big government, statist/globalist affair preferably with the same people in charge.

He's a renewed appeal to blow another global bubble. Drink up until the next leitmotif, boys!

All major world economies are overregulated. Hell, there is a task force in the US Federal Government to regulate clown cars (literally).

What this author considers to be free market capitalism is really just corporatism where all major corporations are given a pass on regulations (BP Oil comes to mind), provided they support the right politicians. For everyone else, they are overregulated and unable to produce any kind of product or service without several government bureaucrats up their ass.

I feel the need to point out that a lot of the fiercest opponents of globalization--or at least the form of globalization currently favored by the world's elite*--are believers in self-regulating markets.

This identification of globalization with free markets is understandable but off. It's like identifying Marxism with free trade. That's merely a tactic.

*There are of course libertarian globalist, and that may be the pure form of the ideology. But they're not in power or even influential.

What he's asking for is the same as the Trotskyites: more State, more control, more of the same, just with the "right" people in charge who can slap some lipstick on the tired, decrepit pig of globalization. At best, the Davos crowd will come up with a "New Coke" solution that makes normal people pine for the good old days when only 50 percent of the population was seeing declining living standards.

"Free markets" is just a cover story. It works on two groups, one group complains there needs to be more regs, the other says markets aren't free enough. Meanwhile they carry on with parasitism, while people argue about economics.

@tublecane the banksters have successfully conflated free enterprise with capitalism with fractional reserve banksterism in most peoples' minds to a degree that free enterprise gets successfully blamed for banksters' globalist and crony-state excesses.

First, the destruction of the labor infrastructure where people who wanted to work and not be on welfare was continually destroyed and not replaced. It isn't that they are randomly depressed and hopeless, they see jobs going to the 3rd world and profits going to Wall Street.

Second, from the Homeowner's association to the EPA or USFS, they are regulated and micromanaged in ways that would make Mao or Stalin blush. There is no "stay out of the way" or "leave us alone". Bake that cake or go to jail! And make sure your grease is properly disposed of, your sign isn't too big, and that you have the inspection and licenses.

Third, if there was some kind of Basic Guaranteed Income or some kind of spread the wealth prosperity, there would be less objection, but we are already too deep in debt and have too many on welfare. If you want an example, in the late 1970's during stagflation and the shift of jobs to Japan there was something called the "Trade Readjustment ACT" or TRA where blue collar workers would get 90% of their last wage supposedly so they could be retrained to a different field. Most just went vacationing. But this first step of first-world-only globalism was tolerated, though you wouldn't want to park a Toyota or Honda in a UAW lot.

The Democrats are failing because it is clear the only wealth distribution is from taxpayers (often via welfare recipients - Obamaphone then, Hillary iPhone later) to crony plutocrats. It is bipartisan if you include the cuckservatives. But CuckyCronyCorp gets rich from the same system. With the democrats it has devolved in to getting republicans to pay democrats' bills. With the republicans, it is virtue signalling either saying they can't do anything, or that bailing out the bankster billionaires will trickle down, or the libertarian tropes where "I don't care if your family is starving, I'm getting cheaper t-shirts from Wal-Mart".

We need to dump the "too big to fail" nonsense, let the bankers et al jump from rooftops and let the occasional economic enema clean out the system. Yeah, it's uncomfortable, but it gets things back on track and running smoothly fast.

Jimmy The Freak wrote:The leitmotif of history: Groups of people think they don't need God and find out the hard way they do.The leitmotif of history: Jews piss off their host nation and get kicked out.

Now that the Jews have a homeland to go back to, perhaps we will see the end of history after all.

Fricke is assuming that there is, must be, a palatable solution. Why he should make such an assumption, or insist in the certainly of a solution, could we but find it, I do not know. I suspect it's because he lacks the fortitude to face a world with no such solution.

"Wow, I missed it. When exactly did we have a free market? We have always been told the government can pick winners and loses WITHIN our own country. Screwed up part about Globalism is now they choose outsiders to also be winners and then have us bail them out. "

@3 It's a good thing much of the country was settled and major industries were set up in the 19th century. Imagine trying to do so today...yeah, not gonna happen. Yes, what happened to let the market settle it out? As a naive 21 year old in 2008, I watched Bush bailout the banks. I was flabbergasted.

"These new clothes of mine are fine, just fine. Everyone should know this."

@4 Of course! They're the best clothes. Nobody has clothes like you do!

@5 It always makes me wonder why progress is considered a good thing? What are we progressing towards?

@8 That had me smiling. Any time Dawkins gets his ass handed to him is a good day. Also, he needs to update that profile photo. Doesn't he know that We are all Europeans based on that latest find? Or is he anti-science?

"The world has gotten f'ed to the point that even the Left can no longer deny it.

But they will cling to their pet causes/ideals/delusions to their deaths.

Which really isn't much to mourn."

@16 It's like those fools on Dawkins' account that @8 pointed out. They'll probably hold on to those views as the Moops chuck them from buildings.

"Third, if there was some kind of Basic Guaranteed Income or some kind of spread the wealth prosperity, there would be less objection, but we are already too deep in debt and have too many on welfare."

@37 If everyone is a millionaire (basic guaranteed income), who decides when everyone gets a pay raise?

"@8 Dorky Dawkins is going to have to loose that awful "We are all Africans" Christmas sweater in his profile pick or relinquish his qualifications as a geneticist.

They wuznut kangz n sheet"

@4 YES!!!!!!!!

"The best thing we could possibly do at this point is return election of senators to state legislatures.

Could you imagine the complete butthurt when the senate goes 70/30 Republican?"

I think it's not unreasonable to ask for a fair accounting. Globalization has been pretty good for the globe as a whole. The standard of living of the average Chinese, or Vietnamese, or Thai, has undergone a dramatic revolution. On this side of the ocean though, the benefits have accrued to a relatively small number of people. The rest were sold on the idea that buying cheap stuff was a sufficient recompense for factory closings, but the issue of where the spendable income would come from as wages went into a 30-year limbo was never addressed.

@59 The standard of living of the average Chinese, or Vietnamese, or Thai, has undergone a dramatic revolution.Does that include the ones who starved in the Great Leap Forward? Would you recommend killing the poor to raise the average so we look good on paper? Your way could fix IQ, too. /sarc

Would you recommend killing the poor to raise the average so we look good on paper?

Crooked Eye Clinton said she would close all the schools that didn't perform above average. How about just not subsidizing Latrina's 21 crackbabies that way the next Latrina will stop at a number she can support?

Bwahahahahah. Jesus, what a mess. Markets are self-organizing. "Globalization" was from a trade POV a proxy for "free trade" when in fact all nations manage trade to their advantage and the needs of their population.

Even more to the point, it isn't trade that is the problem, it's trade with our enemies and that is against our own longer term interests. Sadly, between unions and "free trade" fundamentalism from both the Left as a pacifying force and the right as an element of "faith" (one might even call it 'tradition' gosh, does that mean Vox should support it? after all, it's not based on reason), we ended up giving away our manufacturing base to keep our Ponzi scheme going.

Nothing wrong with markets or them regulating themselves. A market needs no regulating. One only need to be able to enforce contracts, protect property and individual rights and voila, individuals will act in their own interests.

> A market needs no regulating. One only need to be able to enforce contracts, protect property and individual rights ...

That's a very strange definition of "no regulating". Not that I blame you, as it's the same claptrap that's been being sold for decades now, but sometimes the sheer inanity of it needs to be pointed out.

@68 If the market is self-regulating, won't it resolve issues of people who don't honor contracts? The only rights you have in the market are those you can contract with other parties. The same with property rights. Again, wouldn't the market punish those who trespass against those rights?

The concept that if we just let party X (gov't, business, individuals) handle everything it will be utopian is a fallacy that has continually caused grief on this planet.

@61-I'd actually prefer a Robocop situation, where they outright privatize a police force (that's the plot, right?), at least so long as we still have civil law. The way it works in reality is that it's never so clear-cut. You either have private forces taking over the state, or the state taking over previously private responsibilities, or both at the same time. We emphasize one or the other aspect, depending upon our perspective, what point we're trying to make, or what axe we have to grind.

Despite the "strange death of Marxism," I think it's clear that we're still drifting towards more economic centralization, i.e. leftwards, at least overall. Some people can't see it, because they can't think of Big Business as being left of center, for instance, or they listen to the way people talk instead of what they do.

They won't, because most individuals are stupid and short-sighted. They'll act a lot of the time more in their interests than faceless bureaucrats would be able to order them to act. But come on. There will always be sex, drugs, gambling, and a million other ways people let themselves get carried away.

I'm fine with giving them the freedom to die painfully in ditches. That's my idea of a working civilization. But "all of modernity" is no longer interested in Ditch Ethics, and civil society has been worn away by atomistic individualism and state intrusion. So I guess socialism it is.

I'm sure I'm repeating previous comments... But we never "deregulated" and let free markets try to control themselves. We never had free trade and all that. Most likely, financial vampires will always leech off of dishonest corporations while 3rd generation trust fund kids squander capital on conspicuous consumption. That has been the case since we called them "merchants," "kingdoms" and "degenerate aristocrats."

It's also true that our system has been entirely coopted by the vampires, and our vast regulatory edifice exists to keep them in power at the expense of society.

And it's true that trying to recapture the system for the people by doing the same old Wall Street Journal approved voting and shutting up is not going to fix anything.

That isn't necessarily an indictment of global capitalism. Maybe it's a warning against multinational corporations, offshoring, democracy, or cosmopolitanism. Which, if you define global capitalism as those things, then sure, we need something different.

But there's no non-globalist solution to global problems. The only non-globalist solution come from ignoring global problems and focusing on local ones.

It just sounds like OP is attacking the theory of financial markets and trade. The theory is fine. Our practice is flawed. Our culture is flawed. Hoping that free markets will solve non-market problems is flawed.

" In Germany, there are 40 percent who are less well-off in real terms, and half of Germans possess practically no wealth. And nearly one in four Germans works for little pay."

a) The DMark to Euro conversion wiped out half of the buying power due to a severe undervaluation.b) A quarter of the "Germans" are what I call plastic card Germans (our ID card is plastic): Globalism's imported populations. Those are usually unemployed or do simple jobs. That's the quarter "who works for little play".

c) Half of Germans have no wealth? Well that is RATIONAL in a welfare state. It is an entitlement to own nothing.

Oh and." It was assumed that in the end everyone involved will benefit when we remove regulations, [...] and of course when government stays out of our hair."

Funny enough the last one NEVER HAPPENED. Tax rates in Germany are higher than ever due to Cold Progression. (Progressive income tax is one of the demands of the Communist Manifesto of course)

@71-That's an admirable mistake on the above poster's part. Much is made on this site of libertarians being autistes and mad rationalists, and that is a real danger.* I think we know they're not arguing from first principles via strict geometrical reasoning. They're taking a lot of things for granted, and good on them for doing so. It would be nice if they realized that fact, and could admit openly that in many things there's "a better guide than reason."

For this guy, contract law, property rights, and individualism don't count as regulation. They're givens. You gotta have those, otherwise we'd be eating raw meat and copulating randomly. Anything beyond those givens has the burden of proof. Further regulation must be justified, and in that poster's opinion can't be.

Why is the burden placed there, instead of, say, on justifying property rights? Because John Locke already justified it for him? Not really. Because it's baked into our civilization, that's why. Outside the context of centuries of revolving Anglo-Saxon law, such rights aren't given.

*At least regarding Internet Libertarians, and to a certain extent all libertarians, though the authors of that stripe I've read extensively--Rothbard, Nock, Hoppe, Rockwell, etc.--don't strike me as sufferers of the radical rationalism disease.

It would without affirmative action. Whites from families that earn less than $20,000/yr have an avg SAT of 978, while blacks from the most sussessful families earning over $200,000/yr have an avg SAT of 981

We need to set up another Ilk/VFM get-together off the grid.

Not sure how well we would all get along in the real world. Just for the record Kratman that general's grandson was queer before I meet him

@57 - "Without random inspections of every batch of goods from China they will send antifreeze dog food and leaded toys because it's cheaper."

Why the hell are we buying our dog food and toys from China, anyway? Maybe "Because it's cheaper" just isn't a good enough response anymore. It seems that no matter which way we turn things, we are going to end up poorer. It hasn't bothered the elites so far, because they're getting their cut of a globalized market. Maybe we just have to resign ourselves to becoming poorer because we're buying local-made products that cost more, but create other benefits by employing our own people. (And since they ARE our own people, we don't have to worry quite so much about checking every batch of doggy chow for cyanide, because our culture frowns on poisoning people and pets for profit.)

Fortunately for your illegitimate feels, none of those situations concern exterminating the poor... right up until they become zealots of the Religion of Envy and come after my non-saved family members and/or neighbors.

@88-"Hoping that free markets will solve non-market problems is flawed."

That's spot-on. Being a pure free marketeer is like being a constitutionalist in the Current Year. The Constitution was written for the civilization extent at the time of its writing. I don't think it ever worked, but that civilizational context doesn't exist anymore, anyway. The Framers warned us about this, saying in so many words the real people who run this paper government must be virtuous gentleman. That is, they must be raised right, in appropriate culture.

None of which is to say we've actually tried free markets and failed. But we've mixed in enough freedom in the wrong places to cause trouble. I want the idiots who enter into "predatory" lending contracts, for instance, face the brunt of their stupid decisions. But given how many stupid people there are, how unscrupulous are lenders, how no one ever actually reads or understands the contracts they sign, and how much easy money is floating around, maybe anti-usury laws area good idea.

That's just f'rinstance. There are others. My preference overall is for more freedom, but I realize targeted deregulation within regulation often is a mistake. Free marketing up heavily socialized industries,where mistakes big enough will be bailed out (private profit, public loss), is a mistake.

Truth is, however, that these islands of harmful freedom are grossly overstated. The economy continues to get more and more centralized over time, generally speaking. I hope against hope that we're in the middle of a real global shift towards decentralization. But even if that's happening, within nations there will continue to be centralization. This idea that there's been a general rightward shift in recent decades is an illusion. It's been a series of stutter-steps at best.

"How about just not subsidizing Latrina's 21 crackbabies that way the next Latrina will stop at a number she can support?"

"Steve, you irrepressable cockeyed optimist, you."

Snidely's right. Real life shows that Latrina STILL tries to have 21 crack babies. What ends up happening is all (or most) of the girls get sold into prostitution or other slavery, and the boys grow up like animals and mostly become addicts, violent criminals and "radical" "Islamist" Jihadi suicide soldiers.

@88. maniacprovost, no, the theory is trash, because it's not based on how things (most of all human beings) actually work. It's an arrogant dream, assuming that people are better than they are.

@95. tublecane, every people has their preferences, be they acceptable levels of violence, trust/character/honesty and even different vices. Different levels and types of freedoms are (more) appropriate for different peoples.

In the near long run, decentralization isn't going to go away. The Whore of Babylon is coming, and the Beast's most popularly known feature can't happen without effectively complete economic centralization. Should we still fight it? Yes.

It just sounds like OP is attacking the theory of financial markets and trade. The theory is fine. Our practice is flawed. Our culture is flawed. Hoping that free markets will solve non-market problems is flawed."You humans have disappointed the economic theorists. You deserve whatever misery you encounter in the attempt to implement their flawless theories."

Economics is supposed to be the study of finance and how people act, react and influence economic conditions. Any economic theory that doesn't take people as they are into account is just another Communism, waiting for the power to exile nonconformists to the gulag.

"For three decades humanity believed in the blessings that globalization would bring in its wake."

Like a chain smoker who started in his early teens and finds out 30 years later his lungs are filled with tar. The solution at this point is to stop smoking, but according to this guy, the problem is that the cigarettes smell bad, so we need to switch to a minted cigarette instead.

I swear, the most hellish sentence to hand me in the afterlife is to lock me up in a room, for an eternity, surrounded by baby boomer "economists."

This was all by design. I was only 13 years old when it was obvious to me that sending our manufacturing to China etc. would raise their standard of living at the cost of lowering ours. If an unremarkable kid like me could figure it out over 20 years ago, how could it be a complete surprise and "oops, well in hindsight" to these distinguished economists?

The (((bankers/economists))) knew damn well that we'd be here today. They already have a "solution" ("new ideas") planned for us, or they wouldn't have committed to the path in the first place. The exact details of that "solution" I can't be certain of, but I do know it will mean more poverty and boots on our necks.

What also collapsed was the myth that markets can regulate themselves. 1. The Federal reserve, a government sponsored cartel, decided with the omniscience to lower the interest rate in the early aughts.2. FNMA, a government protected entity, starter buying a trillion in packaged mortgages.3. Congress passed the CRA to trumpet the ownership society.Free markets? Now I'm for anti-fraud and strict accounting measures, but I'm tired of this canard.

JamesD wrote:Now I'm for anti-fraud and strict accounting measures, but I'm tired of this canard.

Truly free markets, like true Communism, has never been tried. We can see this by virtue of the fact that truly free markets can never fail. And since all markets fail from time to time, they cannot, by definition, be truly free.

I have gotten to the point where not only do I not know what Vox proposes instead of a vaguely "free market"; ie, the government doesn't fix prices; I am actually unsure what he even MEANS by a "free market".

So, call it midwittery if you like, but proposing a centralized market organization which rewards the political over practical not only invites SJW takeover of the means of production, it makes it logically inevitable.

If on the other hand he proposes that the people of a nation should have property rights - an underlying assumption of Christian, Western governance for 500 years or so - and that prices should not be set by a committee, then ultimately we're just quibbling over details.

Oh don't be absurd, they've both been tried over, and over, and over again.

One usually works and if it fails can be adjusted. One never works and when it inevitably fails USUALLY results in a bloodbath, although the Chinese have managed to move from Communism to nationalist Capitalism moderately well.

The over regulation of the everyday man in an attempt to fill the void left by the forced ejection of common culture (and ethnicity, if you like) has resulted in massive overheads accruing on the working class; and the best the libertarians and free market right can do is whine about taxes. Headline taxes are not the problem; a legislative environment that thinks corporate multinationals are who counts, and the revels in invisible, fractional expansion of detailed low-level control, has devoured all the gains society has made.

Outright nationalism will be the first step in addressing this, because without a sense of "us", every man sees every neighbour as "other" and readily votes for ever-more control at ground level, while the multinationals and elites form a tiny nation-less clique than continues to skim all the benefits right off the top.

>>>>What also collapsed was the myth that markets can regulate themselves.<<<<It must be pointed out that in a free market a business that goes broke ceases to exist as it did before. It is either bought out or liquidated. It is not free market to use taxpayer money or worthless fiat non-money to bail out an insolvent and bankrupt enterprise. Also allow me to point out that "free" market does not mean "anything goes." What "Globalism" has been is a wicked witch's brew of central banks in cahoots with giant corporations who were in cahoots with politicians to RIG the markets in their favor. There are two kinds of markets, a free market, and all other markets are rigged markets, and any rigging of a market is always always always in favor of some minority interest of some kind. It is impossible to "rig" a market to favor the general public at large. I think what needs to be "rigged" is the after-market. For example, those who are incapable of obtaining basic sustenance through market operations should be assisted with food and clothing and shelter from the elements by those who did manage to obtain those goods and actually have a surplus available to contribute to those people who are in need. God put it this way: Eph 4:28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, WORKing with his HANDS the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. 1th 4:11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to WORK with your own HANDS, as we commanded you;

Regarding globalism and assimilation I found this in a 1921 book by Horace Meyer Kallen titled Zionism and World Politics A Study in History and Social Psychology

"46. “Nationalism means self-assertion, contempt from servile sufferance, a higher cultural development; and above all, a determination to take one’s fate in one’s own hand. Cosmopolitanism or assimilation involves surrender of the individuality and destruction of self-reliance and self-respect. A people that is humiliated and is made to feel that its own speech and culture are of negligible importance is one that can also be more easily exploited. No wonder then that with the minority nationalities the wealthy bourgeoisie and the exploiting plutocrats are usually in favor of assimilation and, on the other hand, class-conscious workingmen more or less clearly recognize that problems of cultural autonomy and equality of the national rights are of primary importance to the working class even in their economic struggle."